Evolve

Evolve is my weekly contribution to the site Planet Waves, a wonderful astrology site by the astrologer and investigative reporter Eric Francis. Each week, I respond to a letter from a reader and reflect on key concepts in psychology and evolutionary consciousness. Below are archives from the Evolve Blog. Check back here weekly for the latest edition! Also, check out www.planetwaves.net for the best astrology site on the web!!

July 14, 2011Hello, dear readers, My name is Jan Seward, and I’m a clinical psychologist, creative arts therapist, and a devoted member of the Planet Waves community. When I’m not in my day to day practice as a depth-oriented psychotherapist, I teach all things psychological at an east coast college of naturopathic medicine, read oracles, and offer workshops on the I Ching. I also have the privilege and challenge of shepherding my soon-to-be nine year old daughter Amanda through her current incarnation. Fortunately, as Eric Francis has assured me, I’ll always be the smarter witch.

I began my relationship with astrology on more than just a casual ‘what’s my sign’ basis after a catastrophic event that shattered me. Searching everywhere for answers to the question “why me?” I consulted with an astrologer, and his ability to describe the event and the ‘why’ of it, after the fact and using only my birth information, was the gateway to a transformational relationship with the planets. I began using astrology more and more in my personal life, as well as with my patients. Now, one of the first things I recommend with a new client is that we look at their natal and progressed charts to see what we’re up against and what resources we have to work with.

When Eric and I started a conversation about a psychology column on the Planet Waves blog, we agreed that I should write a brief intro on the usefulness of psychology and its relevance in our current astrological moment. Although I’m not an expert on the heavens, I can say with certainty that an understanding of psychology at this particular moment has never been more important.

Except for about the past 100 years or so, psychology, rooted in philosophy, has always been a science of the soul and the spirit, as well as the mind, which was understood to be rooted in the soul. It has also always been concerned with enlightenment and awareness, with an understanding that in all of us are forces, desires, drives and beliefs that, if left out of awareness, move us like puppets on a string. Psychology, as it has been practiced for thousands of years and in all cultures, is about awareness, integration and transformation — of the soul, the spirit, and the mind.

In our current cultural moment, our ability to understand what drives us and to use that understanding as part of an evolutionary process, will allow us to evolve into global citizens with emotional and moral intelligence, to act cooperatively to preserve our planet, and to resist the mind- (and soul- and spirit-) numbing influences of the media, corporations and our governments. This will be our best chance at surviving what feels like a final reckoning with the collective shadow of unresolved aggression, greed and fear. Our ability to look within ourselves and to understand the way that our humanity reacts with our astrology, and how to leverage that for our own betterment and the betterment of those we love, will also lift the planet.

It is a demonstrated fact that the more we understand our history, the more choices we have to create a different future. And my personal as well as clinical experience has shown me again and again that a strong commitment to awareness, integration and transformation can make even the most challenging astrology an opportunity to evolve.

This column will offer insights into your questions of why we behave the way we behave, in spite of ‘knowing better’. If you want, you can ask about what ‘normal’ (read ‘flexible’ or ‘healthy’) is, especially where it concerns sexuality, your relationships or your kids. I’m particularly good at explaining how we trip each other’s wires — most spectacularly with those we love most — and what to do about that. I’m an expert on personality disorders, addiction, trauma and integrative health. I have a good amount of experience advising about money and finances, and you should definitely ask about your dreams! Finally, don’t ever wonder or worry whether a question is silly — I guarantee that if it’s on your mind, it’s of interest and importance to others as well.

I look forward to taking your questions, and sharing the journey with you.

Many blessings! Jan

August 4, 2011In your introductory article on Planet Waves you say you will offer insights into our questions of why we behave the way we behave, in spite of ‘knowing better’.In the last few years I found a lot of answers to the question ‘why?’, but I am still really helpless when it comes to the question ‘how to change?’.

When I tried to change with my sheer will, I found out far too often, that things turned out even worse. So I decided to just go with the flow, go with where ever the energy will take me — and just watch, and feel. And I thought “maybe change will come around the corner” — just because of increased consciousness.

Now I am watching, and feeling, and watching and feeling… but it looks like I am still running in circles.

For example, I am watching how I am over and over drawn to the same kind of men. These father-like men I really don’t want to be with, but they are the only kind of men with whom I can feel the energy to connect with. Then there are these other men, who would fit far more as partners — as I think — but I can’t feel a thing.

So now my question is, do you have any insights on how to change — smoothly — not only in thinking but in feeling?

Thank you in advance, Stefanie

Dear Stefanie,

Thank you for your wonderful question, and for your courage in expressing your struggle so honestly. Every fall, when I begin teaching a new group of graduate students, I start with this joke: Q: How many psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb? A: Only one, but the lightbulb has to really want to change. (Insert laugh of recognition here.)

But the truth is, even when we really, really, really want to change, we can still find our selves repeating self-defeating patterns over and over again. And as you so accurately point out, even having insight into our pattern, seeing it clearly and connecting the dots, isn’t enough to make change possible. So, if motivation and awareness/insight aren’t enough, how do we change?

It might help to step back for a moment and look at why we repeat destructive behaviors in the first place. Humanity has known for ages that history repeats itself, that we are creatures of habit and short memories. But Freud was the first to understand that we repeat certain behaviors for a self-protective reason. He called it “the compulsion to repeat” or “repetition compulsion,” and he described that by repeating self-defeating behaviors and patterns in our present lives, we avoid remembering the traumatic origins of those behaviors in our past. Paradoxically, we act out in the present what we don’t want to/can’t face from our past.

Although we now have other ways to think about this concept of repetition compulsion — for example, the idea of forming neural circuits that are very hard to re-program (see last week’s blog), the emotional underpinnings of this dilemma are still very real — something I have found true for myself and for my patients. Without exception, my experience has been that when we have been able to get to the roots of the experience, the pattern starts to change. So, in your example, although you understand that you’re attracted to men who are like your father, although these men are not the men you would wish to be with, you don’t have the right chemistry with men who don’t fit this pattern. Somewhere in that chemistry equation lie the early roots of your relationship with your father, in all its good and bad. Whatever aspects you are unable to remember — in spite of your insight and motivation — will get repeated time and time again. Truly, what we don’t remember, we are destined to repeat.

So, how do we access these memories so that we can change? There are many possibilities, all of them having to do with increased insight and self-awareness. Any type of work that would make increased awareness and the recovery of early memory possible would be very helpful. This might be depth-psychotherapy, body therapies like Hakomi, or safely-structured hypnotic regression. Realistically, it may be some combination of many types of approaches, because we store and retrieve early memories in a variety of ways. And then, just as I said last week, we need a commitment to changing the behaviors that keep the pattern going, because insight alone is never enough. As I say to my patients, change is like riding a bicycle, and insight and motivation are the two wheels. Each one is necessary to drive the other forward.

Most important is to have extreme patience and compassion for yourself as you go through this process. Change is never easy, especially change related to the deepest aspects of our selves. Those patterns, however self-defeating, have served a protective purpose and we owe them gratitude, even as we want to help them to go. If we can see the patterns as an opportunity for growth, development, and understanding, we can love them — and ourselves — more fully as we keep pedaling toward change.

Thank you Stefanie and to all the readers who answered the call this week — keep your beautiful letters coming!

Many blessings, Jan

August 18, 2011

Hello Jan Seward,My name is Elliott R. I’d be grateful for your perspective on a phrase I’ve started to come across recently in some circles, “thinking with the heart.” It is often brought up as a key to evolving. Gratefully, Elliott.

Dear Elliott, Thank you so much for this question! This is a subject that is near and dear to all our hearts, and I’ll try to explain a bit about it. Wisdom traditions have always understood that the heart is the seat of emotion, wisdom, compassion, and love. Our awareness of the wisdom of our heart center did not depend upon a knowledge of anatomy or physiology, because even cultures who did not dissect the body knew where — and what — the heart was.

A wonderful example of this comes from ancient China where, in 2600 B.C. Huang Ti, the Father of Chinese Medicine, wrote “The heart is a king who rules over all organs of the body.” In Hindu tradition, the fourth chakra is the heart chakra, which regulates peace, compassion, wisdom, and the coming together of heaven and earth. In Western society, we are finally catching up to the wisdom traditions in our knowledge of the heart.

Within this past century research has confirmed that the heart can actually think, with a nervous system and a way of communicating directly with the brain, the endocrine system, and other organs in the body. In fact, the heart can be thought of as “the little brain” with a big effect: the heart generates an electromagnetic field that is approximately 5,000 times larger than the brain itself. This “heart brain” can sense, remember, self-regulate, and make decisions independent of the central nervous system, or “head brain”. More intriguingly, the heart can know what is about to happen emotionally before an event occurs, and can understand and interpret events much faster — and more accurately — than the brain can process.

What does our intelligent heart mean for our evolution? Well, modern research (much of it done by an organization called The Heartmath Institute, www.Heartmath.org) has shown that the wise heart, in a state of alignment, balance and harmony called coherence, enables us to make better decisions, function more effectively, and get along better with others in groups. Put another way, a heart in a state of coherence gifts us with higher levels of emotional and social intelligence, leading to better outcomes in virtually all areas of human performance.

Establishing heart coherence is easy to do — simply being with others who are in coherence will rub off on us — think of your favorite go-to person when you are agitated, or how you might feel in the presence of the Dalai Lama. Being in nature, or performing certain rituals like yoga postures or the Catholic or Buddhist rosary can also establish coherence. It turns out these rituals were intuitively designed to establish heart coherence — once again, the ancients knew what they were doing! Being with children, whose hearts are naturally open, will also do the trick.

So, for all of you out there who’ve been told to think with your head instead of your heart, to stop wearing your heart on your sleeve; or that you’re “all heart” — accept the compliments! By letting your heart lead the way you’re contributing to the coherence of the planet, helping us all to evolve in the process.

With much heart, Jan.

September 9, 2011

Hi Jan,

I married my husband on May 15th 2010 and we’re already separated! This has been such an indescribably painful experience.

When we met and moved in together he was the most loving, kind and patient person I ever met. After we married he morphed into a controlling, angry and out of control man. All communications went out the window. I tried and tried to make things work but got no co-operation on his part. His behavior spiraled out of control. He got fired from work for inappropriate behavior and attacked two of my kids (not physically).

It’s just so hard for me to accept that it’s really over. If so, what was the point of being married for only one year? Why would I have to have this painful experience? I loved him so much and at one time we were so harmonious together. I just can’t figure out if he was fooling me all along or if something happened to make him change. If I am truly meant to leave it in the past and move forward I must admit it is so very hard to do. Recently after two months of nothing but angry communications we actually had a conversation. He did apologize for the things I said I was upset about but there would be so much work involved to really make things work and I just don’t think he’s up to it.

Thanks, Fugi

Dear Fugi,

Thank you for your letter. You included your astrological information (which I’ve withheld for privacy), and I know that if we looked at your and your ex-husband’s charts we would find astrological explanations for the surprising and painful ending to a relationship that seemed to hold such promise. But astrology talks about potentials and possibilities, and becomes more predictive in hindsight. We are left with psychology to understand how we participate in creating our circumstances by way of free will and the choices we make that determine our futures.

What I think you are asking is: Are people who they say they are, and can we ever really know? And, how do we accept and take responsibility for the choices we’ve made, recognize the destructive elements inside of us and others, and act in ways that will allow us to grow beyond our destructive patterns?

So, to look at the first question, can we ever really know who a person is? Are people’s personalities fixed and stable over time, or is the archetype of a Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde a more likely scenario? Although your example of your husband’s ‘morphing’ from one personality into another is a dramatic one, it’s actually not uncommon. It is very rare that we present who we actually are in the world, for a variety of reasons. In our childhoods we may have been told that who we are, what we need, or how we relate in the world is unacceptable, and that to be loved and acceptable we have to be somebody else. This begins a process of hiding our true selves and presenting a mask to the world that will gain us the love and acceptance we require.

Later, we seek in others the parts of ourselves that we are missing in an attempt to become a whole self. Over time, however, we may begin to resent and to fear those qualities in the other person that drew us to them in the first place. Why this occurs has something to do with the ‘repeating to forget’ phenomenon that I’ve written about previously here on the blog. This is the idea that, when we’re made to remember aspects of early trauma we have not integrated, it is really, really painful, and we’d do just about anything not to have to ‘go there’. Seeing the split-off aspects of ourselves, the parts we were made to suppress, repress or smother, mirrored in another — our partner — can be painful. So much so that we rage against the memories, the pain and the person who we believe to be causing it. This psychological defense mechanism is responsible for the morphing your question has described.

Now to your other question, the question about yourself and whether you can learn something of value from the choices you made here, what can be gained from such a painful and confusing experience, and could you — or should you — have ‘seen it coming’. Philosophically as well as on a soul level, I believe that we make many choices before we are born about the karma we are willing to attempt to work through in any current lifetime.

When catastrophic events happen in my own or my patients’ lives, what ultimately must be explored are the aspects of karmic choice involved that contributed to that situation’s unfolding. This is not about blame. It is more about a commitment to understanding that the situation, whatever it presents, however unforeseeable it might have been, always contains seeds of karmic opportunity if we are willing to look for them. This goes beyond the adage that every challenge is an opportunity for growth. That is certainly true, but it is far more evolutionarily powerful and useful to recognize how this particular challenge, for you, at this particular moment, is precisely the situation that was needed to provide you with the opportunity you asked or wished for when you made the decision to come on board in this particular lifetime.

So, Fugi, I encourage you (literally “wish you the courage”) to continue your search in this painful experience for the seeds of your opportunity to evolve. Yes, letting go of the past and moving forward in a healthier way is difficult. But to stay in the flow of our soul’s unfolding, I believe it is the only choice we can make.

In the months since the situation has unfolded, I am wondering how things have played out, and whether your husband has been able to gain any perspective about his inner demons, the suppressed or cut-off aspects of himself that he longs to regain and recognized in you, and also what insights you have gained about your patterns of choice and responsibility.

You seem to be seeing with very clear eyes that your husband may not have the capability to do the work necessary to understand what karmic opportunities, choices and challenges are at play here. When someone apologizes not for their own behavior, but for the fact that you feel upset by something they have said, they are demonstrating a limited depth of insight that makes them poor candidates for growth based on self-awareness and self-responsibility.

I hope you have continued to find some peace and resolution as well as the recognition that this situation, painful and short as it was, was an opportunity to grow and evolve, and I would love to hear how things are progressing for you on your journey. Thanks again for your question.

Many blessings, Jan

October 6, 2011

Dear Jan,

I have been happily married for 24 years to a wonderful loving man. I know I have issues because of my dysfunctional family so maybe you can help me. Despite my love for him, I often wish I could have another man in my life; one who has the same libido as I do and one who is more open about his affection with me. My husband is really wonderful but he doesn’t examine his feelings much or talk about them much and I miss having someone to talk to about that. I can tell him my feelings but he doesn’t seem to know his feelings so he cannot tell me his.

I also miss having a man desire me as much as I desire him. My husband has desire but he doesn’t show it much and he cannot keep up with me. He acts younger than his age (is open minded and has energy) but he is almost 59 and I am 51 and going through the change. Why do I seem to need more attention and/or sex than he can give? I have lost weight and improved my self a lot this last year but I seem to feel needy and wanting attention that he seems unable to give me. I have wished I could find someone who could complement those parts of me that he can’t, but at my age I still feel unattractive and don’t know if I really want to mess up what I have already.

Is this normal to feel so mixed up, needy, sexual and all that, and what should I do about all these feelings? Is this just my personal dysfunction / self-esteem issue again? I have been to therapy many times but I seem to always end up with a man who has less libido than I, as though I am trading a loving nature for a great sex life.

Please sign me ‘anonymous’.

Dear Anonymous,

Thank you for your question, or, rather, questions, because you’ve asked many. To answer, I’m going to use a way of looking at an issue that’s based on “The Work” of Byron Katie, which is based on the work of cognitive psychologist Albert Ellis, who was the original challenger of conscious and unconscious assumptions.

In Katie’s system, the way to look at any issue or suffering we experience is to see it as a story that we tell ourselves, that we think we somehow need in order to live. Unless we question our story, we will use the same narratives over and over again, suffering needlessly and indefinitely, like living in eternal hell. To look at our story, Katie tells us to ask four questions: 1: Is it true? 2: Can you absolutely know it’s true? 3: How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought? 4: Who would you be without the thought?

If we unpack your question, it’s clear that you have a lot of stories. The first is “I know I have issues because of my dysfunctional family”. Is this true? Are you certain that you have issues? Can you absolutely know this is true? Could it also be true that perhaps these are not ‘issues’, but reactions, fears, confusions, or distortions, all of which are available to be examined and changed? Now we ask the question of how do you react, what happens, when you believe the thought that you have a lot of issues because of your dysfunctional family? Does having this thought make you feel that, because you can’t change your family or their dysfunctions, you can’t change your story? Do you feel hopeless and defeated by this? And, finally, who would you be without your thought or your story? If you stopped thinking of yourself as a person with ‘issues’, who would you be?

You also have stories about your husband, so let’s look at one: “My husband has desire but he doesn’t show it much and cannot keep up with me.” Is this true? Can you absolutely know it’s true? Have you tried different approaches toward your sexuality and intimacy? How do you know that your husband has desire if he doesn’t show it much? Does he talk about it? Have you explored ways to turn talk into touch? Does your husband masturbate? Can you masturbate together, or help each other to masturbate? Have you considered using tools or aids, including drugs for erectile dysfunction, to help him to keep up?

How do you feel or react to the story that your husband cannot keep up with you, and without this story, who would you be? If there were new avenues of intimacy in your relationship, how might you be vulnerable in ways you’ve not had to face before? Might it be easier, less frightening, to continue to see your husband as someone who just ‘can’t’? And what would happen if you invited or challenged your husband to answer the four questions about the stories he tells about himself?

Anonymous, the reason to understand our stories is that unless we understand what is lying underneath what we think and believe, we can change a thousand things and the basic story will always stay the same. We can lose weight, get surgically altered, take endless self-improvement classes, or go to therapist after therapist — the results will always be the same. Unless we are willing to see ourselves as separate from our stories, we continue to write the same ending, and it’s never ‘happily ever after’.

With your heartfelt questions, I encourage you to challenge all of your stories: the story that you are needy and wanting too much attention; the stories that you are unattractive, too sexual, mixed up, dysfunctional; and the stories about your husband. These, if allowed to stand unchallenged, will continue to doom him to failure — that he just can’t give you what you want and need. Try challenging the story that you have to trade a loving nature for a great sex life.

Thanks to the readers who have introduced me to The Work. Katie has developed the work of some pretty intellectualized cognitive psychologists into a form that is meaningful and accessible and has helped thousands. You can see her work on the web, and she offers the four questions and ways to do the work for free on her website. Anonymous, let us know how its going when you begin to rewrite your life.

A note to readers: I will be away next week, and my mailbox is hungry! Please send your letters and questions, I look forward to hearing from you.